Double dissolution is an empty threat

25 June 2002 — 10:00am

Ministers must be bluffing when they threaten to bring on a double dissolution in retaliation for the Senate blocking legislation. An extraordinary, almost unreported contest at last year's federal election shows why.

When the new senators elected last November take office next week, the government should thank its lucky stars that Mick Gallagher of the No GST party is not among them. Had he won just 15,000 more votes in the New South Wales Senate contest, less than 0.4 per cent of those cast, the far-right fringe party leader would have been elected.

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And if he had, the tactics he used to get there would have shown right-wing fringe groups in every other state how they could combine their strength with that of fringe groups on the left to take Senate seats from the Liberal Party.

Their dream would be for the government to call a double dissolution. That would drastically lower the height of the bar minor parties need to clear to win a Senate seat: from 14.3 per cent of the statewide vote at the usual half-Senate election to just 7.7 per cent after preferences.

At last year's Senate election, the government won 20 of the 40 seats on offer and trounced its Labor opponents. Yet in a double dissolution, the same vote would give it just 31 of the 72 seats from the states, surrendering Coalition seats to the Greens in Victoria and to One Nation in WA.

Mick Gallagher would be one of those elected. Gallagher - a former sailor, mayor of Hornsby and perennial candidate who as mayor once physically blocked Philip Ruddock from attending a civic function - was a key organiser of an audacious preference swap that almost won him a seat last year, even with the bar at 14.3 per cent.

His group used to be called the Abolish Child Support party before Gallagher renamed it No GST, for obvious reasons.

Last year it was one of 23 political groups, plus independents, contesting the NSW Senate seats. Sixteen of them won less than 1 per cent of the vote each, but combined their forces by preferencing each other in a strategy that was almost devastatingly effective.

The most effective negotiators were clearly Gallagher and veteran anti-nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott, standing as the Our Common Future Party. Caldicott won barely 5000 votes, but she negotiated her preference swaps so well that by the time she was finally eliminated she had enlarged that to 73,237.

Gallagher started with 25,734 votes, 0.66 per cent of the electorate, but by the time he went out he had built that up to 191,583. That included more than 25,000 votes from the Liberals, who preferenced No GST ahead of the Democrats.

Had Gallagher won just 15,000 more votes from One Nation, he would have outpolled it and received its preferences. He would then have outpolled the Greens and received Green preferences - the Greens also preferenced him ahead of the Democrats - and become the new senator from NSW.

Instead, he fell just short. His preferences, like those of most of the micro-parties and One Nation, ended up electing the Greens' Kerry Nettle. But Nettle herself set a new record by winning a Senate seat with just 4.36 per cent of the vote, barely enough to retain her party's deposit. It was thanks to 420,000 preferences that she edged Democrat senator Vicki Bourne out of the final seat.

Don't think those preference swaps won't be seen again; the NSW result showed the micro-parties that they have a chance of winning a Senate seat if they can work together. And it is worth noting: of 440,000 micro-party votes passed on as preferences to the five main parties throughout Australia, just 1 per cent went to Labor, 4 per cent to One Nation, 7 per cent to the Democrats, 24 per cent to the Coalition, and an amazing 63 per cent to the Greens.

Mick Gallagher's near-miss was the closest outcome of last year's Senate election. But apart from three battles between the Democrats and Greens, another close one also deserves notice. That was in Tasmania, where, had the Democrats won just an extra 1.1 per cent of the vote from Labor, they would have overtaken Labor's third candidate, and then taken the final seat from the Liberals on Labor preferences.

It would have been the first time the Democrats and Greens had won two seats in a state. But lower the bar from 14.3 to 7.7 per cent, as in a double dissolution, and that would happen in every state. On my calculations, a double dissolution on last year's voting would see the minor parties jump from 11 seats to 15, with the government losing two seats, Labor's numbers unchanged and the independents wiped out.

The Democrats would win two seats in South Australia. In every other state they and the Greens would win a seat each (including Victoria, where the Coalition would be well short of the numbers to re-elect its six senators). One Nation would win a seat from the Coalition in WA as well as Queensland, and Coalition preferences would deliver Gallagher a seat in NSW.

On one issue, one can sympathise with the government. It is sheer opportunism for Labor and the Democrats to block a rise in prescription charges that would leave consumers still paying less of the bill than they did when Labor ruled. But the Senate's constitutional powers are there to be used, and all governments have to negotiate their legislation through.

To threaten the minor parties with a double dissolution is like threatening to throw Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Nothing would suit them better.